Scientists here say they made an impression on U.N.

After a solid week of meetings and tours, American scientists and conservationists feel good about their recent visit with a delegation from the United Nations.

During the week of Sept. 21, Paul Dingwall, a New Zealand scientist with the World Conservation Union and the World Wide Fund for Nature and Keshore Rao, deputy director of the United Nation's World Heritage Center, toured Glacier and Waterton Parks as well as the Canadian Flathead.

The two were here to create their own report on mining and other threats to the North Fork of the Flathead River and Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. The Park was named a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage site in 1995. Last spring, non-governmental organizations made their case in front of the World Heritage Committee that Glacier should be considered a "World Heritage Site in Danger," because of mining plans in the Canadian Flathead.

The U.N. Committee held off on that designation. Instead, it decided to send scientists of its own to get an on-the-ground analysis.

Will Hammerquist of the National Parks Conservation Association was one of the many who visited with the delegation and also petitioned the committee last spring.

"There's a window of opportunity right now to have a real change in the direction of the Peace Park," he said last week. "I hope the British Columbia cabinet is watching."

British Columbia controls the bulk of the land in the Canadian Flathead. On the surface, it looks like unspoiled wilderness. No one maintains a permanent residence in the valley, which is as large as Glacier itself.

But the land management plan, known as the two-zone system, says that if the land isn't protected, then it's open for mining.

And mining interests over the decades and even today have poked and prodded the landscape with a network of roads and digs. The latest is a $1 million exploration project for gold by Max Resources.

Dingwall and Rao toured the mining sites on the ground and from the air. They met not just with conservationists and scientists, but with industry executives as well.

Ric Hauer, a scientist with the Flathead Lake Biological Station said the trip went very well.

Hauer, who has been studying the North Fork for decades, took the pair to the air in an overflight tour of the Flathead Valley.

He flew them up the North Fork, into Canada, on a "perfect day," where they got a view of the entire watershed. He then continued the flight over the Flathead Divide where they got a look at the Coal Mountain mine — a huge open pit mine just to the north of the Flathead.

If Canadian companies have their way, an open pit mine like Coal Mountain would sit in the headwaters of the North Fork.

They then swung back around into Glacier and flew down the Divide.

"The feeling I got when they stepped off the airplane that it was a done deal," Hauer said. "They saw what the North Fork looks like and how incredibly wonderful it is."

Hauer said the North Fork needs blanketwide protection on both sides of the border. Energy and mining leases need to be bought out or retired (The U.S. also has leases in the North Fork, they have never been let, however). Logging and logging roads need to be closed — the Canadian company Tembec, for example, is clear cutting in the previously unroaded headwaters of the Flathead right now, and development across the board needs to be curbed.

Erin Sexton represented the state of Montana in the process as the transboundary impact specialist. She was with the delegation the entire week and like Hauer, she too has spent years studying the North Fork.

She agreed the meeting went well.

"It was a great mission. A tremendous opportunity for the region," she said. Not only did the tour focus on the two Parks and the Flathead, it focused on the entire Crown of the Continent ecosystem — from Canada all the way to the southern end of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

She said that also had a great influence on the delegation.

A draft report is expected from the delegation by the end of the year and their full findings will be presented to the World Heritage Committee next summer.

While the tour was a success there was little in the way of hints that land use plans would change in the immediate future.

"Everyone was holding their cards pretty close to their chest," she said.